In the Shadow of the Red Kings
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: In a world where Mina Potter wasn't so much a Potter but a Bolton, the sharpness of a blade was a fear the wizarding world would quickly acquaint itself with. Cruelty, you see, can run in blood like ink in water, tainting all it touches, and there was nothing more brutal than a Bolton with a knife their in hand. Fem!Harry. Bolton!Harry. Incest. Strong M. Ramsay/Mina/Domeric.
1. Chapter 1

**FULL SUMMARY: **In a world where Mina Potter wasn't so much a Potter but a Bolton, the sharpness of a blade was a fear the wizarding world would quickly acquaint itself with, and Westeros would never forget. Cruelty, you see, can run in blood like ink in water, tainting all it touches, and there was nothing more brutal than a Bolton with a knife in their hand. Fem!Harry. Bolton!Harry. Incest. Strong M. Ramsay/Mina/Domeric

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**WARNINGS: **EXTREMELY SLOW MOVING! Bolton focus. Brother sister incest. Triad pairing. Blood. Gore. Torture. Descriptions of flaying. Mind games. Dark!Harry. Fem!Harry. Bolton!Harry. Strong AU for both Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. Book!Roose Bolton. Show&Book!Ramsay Bolton. Domeric Lives. Hodgepodge of book and show. Strong R rating. Ramsay/Fem!Harry/Domeric. Ramsay is his own warning. No one fucks with House Bolton. Blood magic. Twin bonds. Domeric is just trying to be a good big brother, but his younger siblings are fucking sociopaths. Domeric isn't as saintly as he first appears, he's just better at acting.

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**CHALLENGE: **I received a challenge by one of my delightful readers. The challenge was as follows; A Game of Thrones Crossover with a Fem!Harry as a Bolton. It needs to be in drabble form, It has to have a strong Bolton focus, with Domeric Bolton Lives included, and needs to include incest or incestual themes between Ramsay, Fem!Harry and Domeric. Now, when I first read the challenge, I blew it off completely lol. A Bolton Fem!Harry? Impossible. To keep Fem!Harry even remotely like her canon counterpart, there is no possible way to have her anyway like a Bolton, and the whole incest thing between brother and sister might be a line I shouldn't cross…

And then the muses ran wild and I thought fuck it. So here we are kiddos, in the seventh level of Dante's Hell, and I would like to invite you all on this little trip with me to Satan's pit. Should this have ever been created? Of course not! Should anybody read this and not quickly go to confession or for a hot shower afterwards to get rid of the dirt? Surely not. Should I take this and burn my bloody laptop in a pyre? Possibly! Yet, this is fiction, and I thought it might be fun to try and see if I could, even remotely, pull this off plausibly. Here's to trying new things! Even if you really shouldn't lol.

This fic will be told through 500-1500 word drabbles (Because I just can't do shorter lol).

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**CHAPTER ONE: **

**A Beautiful Child.**

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_Mrs Huntington's P.O.V_

Wilhelmina Potter was a beautiful child. Everybody said so. They gushed over her dimpled grin. Gaggled over her boisterous dark curls. Gossiped about her moonshine eyes. Small and soft and sprightly, Mina was the kind of child thought to be more nymph than toddler, sprang free from the limits of an antiquated fresco lining an Italian villa. Petite with long nimble limbs, pale and fair, with a rush of coiled dark hair and eyes the colour of clear ice, lighter than the moon with its distant cold light, equally unnerving in their lustre as their unsettling chill, she was the type of child many parents would dote and brag and blubber about.

Her tragic backstory only helped garner more sympathy and woe to her young, frail plight. Dumped on the steps of an orphanage before the blood and fluid had dried from her birth, she had been adopted by the lovely Lily and James Potter. Fifteen months later, they were being lowered into their graves and little Mina was, again, discarded on the doorstep of her aunt and uncle's moderate suburban house. From what Mrs Huntington had seen of the small family, they cared for the girl, gave her clothes and food and shelter, but were distant. Aloof. More concerned with their own son, Dudley, who Mrs Huntington had taught last year and never wished to teach again.

At first, it didn't make sense.

Mina was quick to smile, and quicker to laugh. She adored games. She was always the first child to offer something to play, and she was good at it, nearly always winning, be it in races or marbles. She danced and played and leapt about the playground with an energy and curiosity found only in pixies from old folktales. Spry footed and swift. She excelled in her numeracy lessons, even at the tender age of seven, her literacy skills were well above her age group, and Mr Hawthorne, the schools music teacher, was going to start harp lessons with her in the following week after witnessing her aptitude for the instrument in her last class. Mina has the hands for it, he told Mrs Huntington while they were on break over a steaming cup of tea. Deft, thin, long, good for getting into and between small spaces.

She took to certain things with a hunger and greed that rivaled a starved mutt. Mina adored dogs and horses, often dashing for books about the animals in her classes library time, enraptured by the illustrations printed on crinkled pages, needing repeated prompting to put the books back at the end of her allotted hour. She was clean and quick, not one who needed to be asked to tidy up after herself. Polite to the point of contention. Lyrical and light in her speech, and still, somehow imperious when she did decide to talk.

Wilhelmina Potter was a beautiful child, indeed. A child many parents should want, yes. A child any teacher, such as Mrs Huntington, should be delighted to teach, surely. Yet…

There was something terribly wrong with the girl.

Mrs Huntington didn't spot it at first. She highly doubted anyone could. Her beauty, as it did with all horrid beasts, hid the brutal cruelty within until it was too late to run. Of course the little boy who had snatched the orange crayon right out from Mina's hand, who was found dangling off the jungle gym by a broken leg, only fell. Undeniably the girl with lovely, long blonde hair, who had taken to taunting Mina about her own wild locks, accidentally had her pigtail sucked into the classroom fan, needing the plait to be cut from torn scalp to free her. Naturally, the twins who inadvertently kicked a ball that hit Mina in the chest, knocking the smaller child over, tripped and smashed their baby teeth out on the playground wall. Definitely. Clearly. Obviously.

And then the pencil sharpener went missing.

It was only a little thing. Pink. Single blade. Nothing extravagant. It was the type of sharpener you could pick up for fifty pence at the local office store. Mrs Huntington kept it on her desk, right by her pot of pens, and pupils would come up to use it over the large paper bin when their nibbled pencils got dull.

When little Cassie had asked to use it that fateful day, only to find it gone, Mrs Huntington had done nothing more than to promise to bring another tomorrow with a bashful smile, believing she had, for once, left it at home. In truth, Mrs Huntington would not have missed it at all, or gave it much more thought than she already had, if they had not found poor Luke the way they did.

Mrs Huntington would always remember the lack of blood in the bathroom stall. A bloody hand-print on the white toilet seat, where Luke had been pinned, a splash by the sink, a few drops by the door, but nothing more. She thought, perhaps, she would remember the sobbing too. The breathless kind, more wind and air than noise. Keen and high pitched. Whispers of pain so great they can't be voiced. The hand, that horrible, bent, red hand would be another nightmare Mrs Huntington would never forget. And Luke's gasping pleas? They would forever haunt her dreams.

_Please! Please! I don't want to play anymore! I don't want to play! You win! You win the game! You win! _

The doctor's would later tell his distraught parents little Luke would need a skin graft for his hand. The _flayed_ hand. In the end, the limb couldn't be saved, and little Luke was a little more less. The psychiatrist he would hire later on in life, when he awoke in sweats from distorted nightmares, clutching at his prosthetic hand in weeping breaths, would inform him that day was the day he acquired his aversion for games and the word play. Mrs Huntington would tell herself, much later, sitting in her prison cell, that it was that easy spring day she had seen the devil for the first time.

It was only a shame she had not known it at the time.

Traumatic mutism was the clinical term for Luke's following silence when the police questioned the poor boy to try and discover what horrendous incidents had been undertaken in that primary school bathroom. Mrs Huntington just thought it was dread. Crippling dread. Fear did that, you see. It took your voice right from you. Stole it and never gave it back. Much like someone who had taken her pencil sharpener and took a child's hand from him.

They never did find the skin, no matter how hard they searched.

The school closed for six months while the investigation took place, the teachers at the focus of interrogation. Just six months. When no culprit was found, no weapon, all leads dry like unearthed roots, the doors were opened once more and everything went back to normal. Yet, Mrs Huntington would never forget that bathroom. A bloody hand-print on a field of white. The cries of a tortured child echoing off tiled wall.

A missing pencil sharpener that Mrs Huntington shouldn't be fixing on, but couldn't get passed, because, really, who would use a pencil sharpener to skin someone? Flay a child? The blade was small. Thin. Like Mina's fingers. _Good for getting into and between small spaces. _It couldn't be. It was a coincidence. Just a coincidence. The police didn't need to hear about her rambling tale of misplaced cheap stationary. She'd dropped it on the way in. It was likely down some drain, or resting pretty in a crook of her car. It was nothing. Nothing at all. She was seeing dots where there were no dots. So, she shoved the panic and worry away, and she did as all good teachers do. She got back to work.

In her first lesson back, Mrs Huntington kept it easy for the children, who were jittery and still refusing to use the school bathrooms, muttering amongst themselves of angry ghosts that ate bad children's hands. A few colouring pages distracted them from the sprouting urban legend enough. And then she made her route around the room, checking on her students work, and she saw it.

Again.

Mrs Huntington would never know why she froze right behind Wilhelmina Potter, but she did. Mina was at her desk, kicking her legs into a swing. The child was always in constant movement, tapping finger, swinging foot, fiddling. It was the one thing she got in trouble for. Mrs Huntington peeped over her shoulder and wished she never had. Mina had turned her cartoon robin over to the blank side, placed her palm squarely into the centre of the paper, fingers splayed, and had diligently traced her delicate hand on the white surface in red pencil. She coloured it in splashes of crimson, splodges and drips outside the line. Blink. Bloody hand-print on a pristine blanket of snow. Blink. The tip snapped at the wrist on one of Mina's vigorous strokes.

Mina dipped her hand into her jeans two sizes too big. Mina slid free a small pink pencil sharpener, screw loose and wonky on the blade, razor broken off and hastily attached back on. Mina paused. Felt the heat at her back. Glanced over her shoulder. Looked up, long neck craning back. Eyes the colour of the moon locked with her own. Mina smiled brightly, toothily. Mrs Huntington couldn't breathe.

"Are we going to play soon, Mrs Huntington? I'm bored."

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**Thoughts? **


	2. Chapter 2

**NOTE: **Just a quick note to clear up the structure of this story. This fic is told in a non-linear perspective. As in each chapter will be from different points in time, some decades a part, others a few moments. This means we get to the juicy, meaty part of the story (The Boltons) without a hundred drabbles having to lead up to it lol, and yet, throughout the story, still get an in depth look at Mina's life before she's in Westeros. And on that note, I would like to say this is **not** a rebirth/reincarnation story. I hope this clears up any confusion!

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**CHAPTER TWO:**

**What Is A Knife Compared To A Wand?**

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_Antonin Dolohov's P.O.V_

Hot breath wheezing in frigid air. The frenzied, lumbering strides of lopsided footing. The fetid stench of burnt copper, scorched flesh and pine hanging heavy. The woods were tapering now. The terrain nothing but a dashing cline of snow and rock, patches of dead river rush grass like tiny, skeletal fingers reaching up from the depths of the cold earth. An immense frozen river glistening, weaving, snaking. On the horizon stood a single menacing structure.

High walls pierced dense grey sky. Triangular merlons like ragged sharp stone teeth. Colossal turrets overlooking the river like sentry guards in slate armour. Misery made a home here, in the shadow of the castle. Gloom, and frost, and dour men in linen and leather.

Antonin Dolohov darted for it.

Or, perhaps, more accurately, the stooped, wounded man who was once known as Antonin Dolohov, hobbled for it as swiftly as he could. His name didn't feel like his own. Ill-fitting like a choker made of poisoned barbs. Antonin Dolohov was a thing of before. Past. Gone. Whatever he was now, man or less, it was not him, Antonin. It never would be again. _She_ had taken that. Just as she had taken his left foot. His right eye. His fucking _duelling _arm. She'd stolen that first. Snickered as she did so.

_Let's see if you're really so much different than me. I bleed red. What colour do you think you bleed?_

The man who used to be Antonin remembered that. She took her time. Skinned it from shoulder to nail-bed. Used just enough fire to stem the bleeding, but not enough to dull the pain or kill the nerves. She knew her anatomy, if nothing else.

_It's no fun if you don't scream. You don't want me to have a bad time now, do you, Dolohov? Do you!?_

She'd began shedding the muscle next. From finger to elbow, nothing but a rubble of cracked, yellowed bone left. He couldn't move it anymore. Couldn't so much as twiddle a thumb. He'd begged then. Prayed like a child. Snot nosed and trembling. He'd do anything, he said. Give anything. Please, please, please…

_How about I have those pretty brown eyes, then? Yes?_

_Yes! Yes! Take them! Please! Just stop!_

_She was kind enough to only take one._

It was supposed to be easy. Wilhelmina Potter was just a girl. _Fifteen. _A mudblood taken in by blood traitors. Or, if rumour was to be believed, the result of a dalliance between a Black and some muggle chit, what with her black hair and silver gaze. Perhaps even Sirius's brood. He did so like sullying himself. Yet, that was all that was. Hearsay. You only needed to take one peek at the girl in person to see how shaky the ground that gossip rose on was.

_Come on Dolohov. We're friends now, aren't we? I dare say I've seen more of you than anyone else ever has or will. So, be a good boy and tell me where Tom is. Tell me and all this will stop. No more knives. No more cutting. No more pain. That would be nice, wouldn't it? _

_He's… in Lestrange manor… Lestrange manor… Please… No… Please… You said you would stop! Please! Stop! You said! You said! _

_Yes, well, I'm a fucking liar. Now, you know the rules. Hold still. _

She didn't have black hair, not in the typical sense, just as you didn't have a black sky, not really. It was _dark. _Starless. Black in only name for there was no other word for the pigment, or the complete lack of hue. And her eyes… Two strange, pale moons, nearly white, too pale, too large, to ever thought to be silver. No colour. Just absence.

_We're going to play a special game today, Dolohov! We're going to see how fast you can run. If you make it back to Tom, you're free. If not… Well, I'm going to be angry. You don't want to make me angry, do you?_

_No! No! I won't! I promise I won't! _

And although she had the aristocratic features the Blacks did, all the refinement was gone, supplanted with a sort of feral splendour. From her left ear hung a single earring, garnet, cut like a drop of blood. Stating she was a Black was like saying a shark and a seabream were the same. Both had fins. Both had gills. Both swam in the sea. Only one would tear you limb from limb.

_Remember the game? You go to Tom, I chase. On the count of three, run. One. Two…_

_Three. _

When he and Thorfinn Rowle cornered her in that horrid little mudblood café after crashing that ghastly Weasley wedding, he thought his luck had finally flipped. Here was his chance to deliver the one thing his Lord wanted most, an insipid, tiny, fifteen-year-old girl, and there was no one in his way. No Weasley. No mudblood. No fucking werewolf.

_Peak-a-boo, I see you! _

She'd been separated by the wedding raid. Alone. Weak. He thought, back then, before he slunk out from behind the cashier, he might even get some pleasure off her young body before handing her over. You know, for all his hard work. Just like old times with the mudbloods. He enjoyed how they thrashed and cried and begged. Now he was the one who writhed and wept and pleaded.

_A forest. Hogwarts in the distance. Memory of the safety of it as a boy. Should run to Tom. Wilhelmina said so. Run to Tom. Freedom. Yet, can't fight the remembrance of security. Veered towards it. Run for it. A cave. Run. Run. Run. Keep running. Don't stop._ _Get to Hogwarts. Get safe. _

He'd raised his wand. Hex on the tip of his tongue, her back to his face… And he was promptly hit with a stunner. She was a faster draw than him, spotted him in the reflection of the shop window. Thorfinn had crashed right next to him. She had stood over him then, looked him in the eye, smiled that keen, dimpled smile, and it was then, only then, he realized his mistake. A shark in a human suit.

_Through the cave. Winding. Long. Run. Stumble. Fall. Get back up. Out. Something different. Something wrong. Castle not quite Hogwarts any longer. No. Trick. Wilhelmina's trick. She loved her tricks. Still Hogwarts. Has to be. Still safety. Run for it! Run for it! _

He did not know fear until she had put her wand back into the bun of her long, dark hair after locking the place down, pulling free a small, glistening knife from her boot. Such a muggle thing. A knife. As a pureblood, you learn to fear magic. Hexes. Curses. Spells. A knife? Too muggle. What was a knife compared to a wand? Nothing.

_Everything in Wilhelmina's hands. _

He knew that now. He knew that as well as he knew what Thorfinn looked like missing the bottom half of his jaw, tongue lolling and flopping like a floundered trout on his pale neck. He'd died too soon. Mina was furious. She learned from it quickly. Used it against the man who used to be Antonin. She knew how to keep them alive… If this could be counted as living.

_Hot breath wheezing in frigid air. The frenzied, lumbering strides of lopsided footing. The fetid stench of burnt copper, scorched flesh and pine hanging heavy. The woods were tapering now. The terrain nothing but a dashing cline of snow and rock, patches of dead river rush grass like tiny, skeletal fingers reaching up from the depths of the cold earth. An immense frozen river glistening, weaving, snaking. On the horizon stood a single menacing structure. Antonin darted for it. Hogwarts. Safety. _

She won in the end. She always did. Pain conquered time, obliterated it like glass on concrete, until thought and moments were merely jagged slivers and shards too agonizing to touch. Maybe this was a trick. An illusion. Mina in his mind once more, tearing it apart, ripping and stomping and smashing. She was fond of doing that when she lulled with the knife. Invade your mind, take your memories, distort them and paint them red. By the end, you never knew what was real or what wasn't. In the end, you lost everything. Or maybe Antonin was remembering Hogwarts wrong. Perhaps it had always looked just like this. It didn't matter as he got to the portcullis of the great gate, slammed into the cold metal, pounded with his one good arm.

"Let me in! Let me in!"

Iron churned. Gate opened. Antonin fell to his knees through the entry. Scrabbled in the mud and muck like a worm. A hand on his back. Lifting. He blindly clutched for the person, swollen black and blue fingers wrapping in leather and fur, tugging, jerking. Warmth. Sweet, sweet warmth.

"Locke, what is the delay? If we are to make it to the Weeping Water by midday we must ride now."

Antonin stilled. Soft voice. Lyrical. Contrarily dominating. The pitch was wrong, too deep, but Antonin knew that voice. It was all he had heard for time untold. The chest he was clasping vibrated underneath his numb, frost-bitten hand.

"It seems to be a man, my Lord. Or, should I say, what remains of a man."

The person shirked him off. He fell once more. Crashed to his knees like a puppet with its strings cut. He huddled. He rocked. His good eye stared down, at the floor, at the dirt and sludge, and that shrivelled heap of cracked bone, shredded muscle and burnt flesh rested limply at his side.

"Father, look at his arm…"

Different voice. Harsher. Accented. He should look up. He should see. He knew this, but couldn't. Too many voices. Voices he knows. Different shades but same root. He'd broken the rules. He didn't play the game. He ran, but not to Tom and now-

"Ramsay."

The first voice again. _Look up. Look up. Look_ up. Another new voice joined the fray.

"I had no hand in this."

And he did. He looked up. He _saw. _Three men, walking closer from a cluster of chestnut horses. Prowling. The oldest was of average size, cloaked in thick black fur, pale and beardless, dark hair held back by leather throng so its long tail dangled down his spine, eyes like _two strange moons. _The man next to him was younger, same dark hair brushing broad shoulder, _curly_, adorned in red and pink riding skins, though taller, he was as _lithe and nimble _as, what could only be, his father.

Then Antonin spotted the boy at their back lurking in the shadows, the owner of the last voice.

_Fifteen._ Sixteen, perhaps, but Antonin knew he was fifteen. He was dressed crudely. Ragged in pelts and hides, a tattered belt holding a vulgar dagger, as if he had only just been dragged in from the wild or a farm. Lankier than the previous two, his height was tallied with a great scope of sinew and muscle that promised to be broad and strong in later years. A warrior's build, they often called it. You could always tell the heavy hitters from a young age. Antonin had been one, once upon a time before Wilhelmina.

His face was paler than his fathers and brothers, leeched and sharp sloping, and Antonin knew what that skin would look like with his own blood sprayed over it. _He'd seen that skin with his blood painting it. _He knew those eyes, only a shade darker than the ones that had gleamed so merrily as the knife was twisted and slashed. He knew that plush mouth, how the corners pulled, left slightly higher, in a keen grin when his scream broke free from his convulsing throat. He knew how those thin long fingers could find the spaces between things that should never be divided. He knew that dark, long hair, though the boys was straight as slick ice. He was beautiful, in a _feral_ way.

Antonin knew all this because he saw Wilhelmina right there.

The boy cocked his head at him.

The red garnet earring from his right ear twinkled in the grey light of dawn.

A sound, rough and hoarse and ugly shattered through him, through the chilly air. He was laughing. Laughing loudly. Laughing uncontrollably. Laughing wildly. He didn't recognize it as his own, as he didn't understand the wrecked ruin of his body, as he didn't acknowledge his name any longer. She'd taken his voice too. Nothing was his own anymore.

"I'm sorry! I'll play! You hear that, Mina! I'll play! I swear!"

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**Whose P.O.V do you want to see next?**

**A.N: **This one went a tad over the word count limit, but I felt like it helped set the tone of the chapter, so I hope no one is too bothered by it. **I just wanted to quickly say I am accepting prompts for this fic; **be it a single word, a poem, a song, even a colour, anything at all. I'm literally making this up as I go along lol, and any help in the inspiration department would be greatly appreciated. I also want to make a quick note here that I know Mina seems like a outright rabid dog currently, but we have only so far seen from people who she's personally affected very, very negatively. There will be a more, I won't say nice side lol, but a more... human side to her later on. Not every chapter is going to be about torture lmao, even if my inner horror fan is stomping their feet at the mere possibility of anything else. All that said and out the way, I really hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, it was so much fun to write!

**THANK YOU **to the follows and favourites, and the wonderful reviews! Each notification really does make me smile.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER TWO:**

**The Game Is Afoot.**

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**Prompts Taken: **Well-behaved women rarely make history.

Red.

Nobody is a villain of their own stories.

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_Wilhelmina's P.O.V_

Well-behaved women rarely make history, a wise man once said. Wilhelmina Potter was neither interested in being well-behaved _or_ making history. She didn't need her face printed in some dusty old textbook. She didn't desire her name repeated like prayers in lectures, dates of her life time-lined for ease of learning. She didn't wish for a pretty little medal pinned to her chest in empty platitude. Wilhelmina Potter wanted something much, much, much more.

She wanted to _live._

That's all. To live. For as long as she could remember, that was all Mina had ever wanted. Since Dudley had first tripped her over, and she had sat there, gawking down at skinned knee, hearing him laugh, watching red soak and sprinkle and seep, feeling her heart thud, thud, thudding in her chest like a war drum, she had come to an astonishing realisation that had clung to her throughout her sorry little existence.

Life was survival of the fittest.

It was a rush. A sudden drop. A catch in breath. Grasping onto the edge, teetering, one second, one wrong movement, a shift in wind, from plummeting and it all felt so fucking _alive_. She also found, after pushing Dudley in front of that car an hour later, watching as it broke both his legs and cracked his skull as he went rolling down the road, that, in this cruel, cruel world they lived in, it was a principle of nature. The person who survived had to scrape and claw and bite and thrash, and the person who didn't, well, they ended up as Dudley did.

Smeared across the pavement.

Wilhelmina Potter bent down to the ground, gloved hand sweeping away the twigs and leaves from a ditch in the dirt. A footprint stared back. Standing, she eyed the cave in front of her keenly, whistling low. The sound carried into the darkness, a song sung backwards. The cave was deep.

Gazing at the black mouth of the cave gaping at her, Mina fiddled with her ruby earring. Just one, dangling from left lobe. The only thing she had from, she thought, her birth parents, or wherever it was she had come from. Like her, the earring had to come from somewhere. Things, and babies, didn't just arrive out of thin air. It brought her little comfort, but comfort all the same, to have something completely, wholly, utterly hers. She came from somewhere, from someone, from someplace, as did this earring.

They had found it wrapped in her blanket on the steps of the orphanage, before Lily and James Potter had adopted her. A chip of ruby that had endured as long as she had, through murder and prophecy, war and death, here they stood, her and the earring. Against the odds, Mina lived, and that, she thought, was terribly funny.

Not as funny as Antonin Dolohov, well, what was left of him, staggering and stumbling through the forest to his master. However, it was pretty damned close. Then again, the best was to come. He hadn't realised Tom was dead yet. He thought he still had a chance. The idiot didn't know the war was over, Mina had won, she was the shining saviour of the wizarding world, cast far from any suspicion, his cause was lost, there was no hope. But he would.

_He would. _

Just as soon as she caught up to him.

No point in ruining the surprise too quickly.

Merlin, she fuckin' loved surprises!

Flicking out her wand, Mina cast a Lumos and trudged into the cave's lofty, blackened bay. She couldn't help it really. The games she played. It was a… Thirst. A hunger. A shout in her mind, yelling, screaming, that she could never fully ignore. She wasn't outrightly vicious for vicious sake. There was no sexual joy to skinning a man. No delighted quiver at a wail. She wasn't a fuckin' depraved pervert.

But she was possessive.

"Antonin! I know you're in here! Come out and play!"

That's what it was. Control. What Mina did, it wasn't just about desire or brutality. It was that moment, that remarkable instance when the last breath came. A flutter in the wind. When you stared into a man's eye, when they knew it was the end, _you _were their end, and suddenly, you were… God. It was in your hands, your blood-soaked hands, to give them hope or snuff the flame.

"There's no need to feel shy! I won't hurt you… Much!"

They became an extension of herself, as hers as her ruby earring. She could make them say what she wished. Forget what she wished. Become something only she could imagine. Meld and carve and cut and render until, there, before her, was something only she could make. Not Albus. Not Tom. _Her._ A beauty she had cut free from the slab of mundane marble. Unfortunately, yes, some stone was weaker than others, and statues sometimes smashed before you had finished, but that was the price of art, wasn't it?

"Antonin…"

It wasn't like Mina hurt sincerely innocent people. She wasn't a monster. She wasn't Tom Riddle. The first person she had hurt, truly hurt, Luke Wicker, she had caught shoving his hand down a crying four-year olds trousers in the girls bathroom. It had only seemed right to take that hand from him.

Dudley's harassment had been getting worse, Larry, their neighbour, had nearly drowned in the river Dudley had lured him and pushed him into. A knock to the head, a five-week coma in hospital, a persistent stammer and memory issue that lasted to this very day, had halted all that bullying. All it had taken was a quick shove into a car. And Dolohov? Fuck, don't get her started on his long list of sins.

In the end, didn't she make a better world? A world where people like Luke, Dudley and Dolohov couldn't go around un-muzzled? And now, in this new world, fresh from the greatest war Wizarding kind had ever seen, Death Eaters on the run, so many who no one would miss if they disappeared off the face of the earth…

Well, Mina had her hands full.

Sure, her methods were… Out of the box, but better them than her. Better them than someone like Remus or Hermione. Real, good, honest people. Because… Because it had to be someone. _Mina couldn't stop. _She needed to keep going. As the game, once began, needed to end. Dolohov needed to be caught. Dolohov needed to die. Need. Need. Need. Gnaw, gnaw, gnawing away. You see, the need always won.

She _wasn't _a monster.

She had _some _principles.

"Dolohov, this is getting real bloody old!"

A flicker of pasty light flashed at the far end of the cave. Mina's grin glinted wolfish under the pale light of her wand. Striding down, she came to a, not a shimmering eye, gleaming buckle, or anything vaguely huddled Dolohov, but a crack in the cave's side.

A crack just big enough to fit through.

A crack that had a scrap of Dolohov's torn, bloodstained shirt stuck to a ragged edge.

"Gotcha."

Tapping the Lumos off, stuffing her wand back through the bun of her hair, Mina crept through the crack, careful to keep her sides from wrenching into the jagged stone. One step. Two steps. Three steps. The wind rushed. Cold. Sleek. Bitter.

Winter.

Something powdery crunched underfoot.

Snow.

A flash right in the eyes.

Sunlight.

Mina came sliding out into a field of snow and ice. Her breath a lazy cloud of smoke in the air. The odour of pine from the surrounding woods was potent, almost sickeningly so. In the distance, on a slanted knoll, before a great frozen river, stood a… Castle.

A castle that was _not _Hogwarts.

High walls, grey, it was an almost ugly slur on the horizon. Dank, dark and dim. Mina whirled around. It was gone. Nothing. No crack. No splinter. No hole. No fuckin' cave. Just a slanted mound of snow-capped rock. She brushed a gloved hand across the icy face.

Solid.

No illusion. No spell. Only stone.

Well… Shit.

A glimmer of red on white caught her eye. She strode down to the side, bowed, near the bed of dead river thrush, fingered a brittle, withered leaf. Blood. Antonin's if she had to guess. She pressed the leather tip of her finger to her bottom lip. Fresh. Still warm. He was close. Her gaze dragged to the snow. Slight impressions. Askew. Crooked. Limping. Darting into the forest. North… Towards the castle.

"So that's the game you want to play then?"

Mina stood once more. She eyed the clean face of the cave that was no more. Turned to gaze at the castle. It could be a trap. A Death Eater stronghold. She did tell Antonin to run to Tom. Perhaps in his confusion, upon not being able to sense his master, he had run to the next best thing. His brethren.

"You naughty boy."

Still, something was wrong. She had set Dolohov free at night. It had only been three hours. Much too soon for the sun, shrouded by clouds as it were, to be shining in the sky. It was spring back home. The snow here spoke of winter. Pine didn't grow in the forbidden forest, yet here she was enveloped by it.

What a delightful… Surprise.

Mina _loved _surprises.

Grinning, she used her thumb to swipe at the drop of blood now frigid on her lip, smearing a stream of crimson. With one last glance to the clear stone behind her, she took off running, charting Antonin's steadily fading trail.

The game was afoot, and there was only one thing Mina liked more than games and surprises.

Winning.

* * *

**Whose P.O.V do you want to see next?**

* * *

So there's our first little peep into Mina's mind. It was only a small little glimpse, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same! As said before, **prompts are more than welcomed!**

* * *

**A huge thank you to everyone! **Silent readers, followers, favourite-ers, reviewers, if I could, I would give you all a hug, but I'm afraid my thanks will have to do.

**As always, please drop a review if you have a moment, they keep the muses chattering.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three:**

**Memories, Myranda, and the Mumbling Man.**

* * *

**Prompt: **She was no longer made of substance, but something more like smoke.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep ~ Robert Frost.

* * *

_Roose Bolton's P.O.V_

Roose Bolton recalled the first time he met his twin bastards. Clustered in the Great hall of the Dreadfort, the Miller's wife, for her name always escaped him, stood, sodden from the snow, shivering in the chill air before him and his men-at-arms.

She was once a tall and willowy woman, Roose remembered, with long legs and firm breasts, and fair, in that common sort of way, flushed, with filled flank. That day, she was nothing of the sort. Brittle and broken and bruised.

A withered flower picked too soon.

He had originally come across her solely on mishap. A young bride of ten-and-five, she had wed the old Miller of the Weeping Waters, twice her age and twice her girth. Soon after her marriage, Roose had been on a hunting tour, where a fox, with a good pelt, had led him to the Weeping Water streams.

Her husbands Mill was not far from the craggy banks, and that day, by luck or misfortune, she had taken to washing the laundry in the fresh waters. The frigid waters had soaked her skirts, fabric sliding and fusing to skin, and the moment Roose saw her there, glistening and gleaming, he desired her.

And so, he would have her.

By the custom of First Night, though forbidden by another tiresome Targaryen king before his birth, it was his, Roose Bolton's, right to bed his vassals new brides, and the Miller had not gained Roose's permission before seizing such a jewel for himself.

Roose did not weather well when he believed himself cheated.

He was merely, as any good Lord was ought to do, upholding the ancient laws of their land when, that evening, he had the Miller hung on the edge tree of his mill.

He took the Miller's wife under his swinging corpse.

He left her there, still as stone and as cold as it too, gazing at the body of her dead husband, and was gone by sunrise.

Twelve moon turns later, she came to the Dreadfort, stooped over the two bundles in each crooked arm, too slender and too gaunt, with watery eyes, begged audience, and Roose greeted the bastards conceived under a swinging corpse.

Roose, upon hearing her frail assertion that these were, in truth, _his _children, had first considered having her whipped for her impudence, and the babes taken out back to be left in the cold to the old Gods mercy, for he had none to give.

But then she fell to her knees, this Miller's wife of ruin and rot, and held them out to him with trembling arms.

"See, me Lord! See! I lie not! Please, me Lord… Please…"

The smaller one caught his gaze initially. A girl if he was not mistaken. A girl of dark hair and moon hue eye, and so much like himself, like his own dear dead mother, there could be no refuting of her blood. The larger babe, a boy, Ramsay the Miller's wife had called him, though she had not named the girl, was equally Bolton in appearance, though there was a bulk, already at this young age, that was not common in Roose's kinfolk.

The little girl seemed, in contrast, made from wisps of smoke next to her brother.

Roose Bolton was a man of many faces, most not pretty, but he was_ not_ a Kin slayer.

He took the child into his own arms, settled her weight into the crux of his elbow, and simply stared down as the Miller's wife hobbled to her feet, stole Ramsay close to her own quivering, breathless breast, and raved. She told of a good-brother, her late husbands, who had seen the babes eyes, beaten her and sent her away from the mill to never return for her dalliance with Lord Bolton while her husband had not yet grown cold.

She had no shelter, no food, no hope, apart from that her liege Lord would give her.

"Wilhelmina."

He had told the Miller's wife. She had blinked at him, mouth agape, baffled.

"Her name will be Wilhelmina."

After his own mother.

The Miller's wife had no quarrel.

Unlike the rest of the Lords of the North, who prayed for sons and nothing else, Roose had…

Roose had always sought a daughter.

A Bolton, if nothing else, was pragmatic. A son, for now Roose possessed two, even if one was of less desirable legitimacy, was a knot of their own ambition. A son, Roose knew, as he once had with his own father, would rise and take their father's seat one day. You see, sons were like roses. Desired but thorny.

They grew into men. Men with their own soaring pride, their own lofty thoughts, and their own fervent opinions on how ones House should be run. If not handled correctly, often times, anew, as Roose with his own sire, they would clash with the father. You needed sons to carry on the family name, yet with daughters…

It was different.

Even when they wedded into another House, switched their cloak and name for different colours, their blood ran true and their home, their _real_ home, always came first. One need only look to Eddard Stark and his Tully bride, see the Sept of the Seven freshly erected in their lands, by their ancient Godswoods of all places, to see how persistent a wife could be.

Roose had heard their children had been blessed in the light of the Seven, the first to be done so in the Stark's long history.

Sons may make certain the name carried on, but it was daughters who ensured the families survival.

There was no threat with a daughter.

No one-day-soon-betrayal.

A daughter was something you could hold close and not fear a knife in the back.

A would-be first in Roose's life.

And perhaps, with the one in his arms, staring so bravely and boldly right at him, Roose was struck with a sudden sense of… Sentimentality. She did, even at this tender age, look so much like his mother, the one person Roose was sure he had ever felt anything remotely like love for.

Perhaps he was getting old.

"And she will stay with me, here, at the Dreadfort."

Again, this brokered no fight from the Miller's wife. No doubt, as many did, she preferred her son. A son who would one day grow old and strong enough to aid her at the Mill, where a daughter would only be another mouth to feed.

_Fools. _

Not to Roose.

By nightfall, the Miller's wife was back in custody of the Mill, her son Ramsay at her breast, and the old Miller's brother was missing his tongue, and a few other superfluous body parts. The twins were gifted one thing and one thing only, to know each other by.

A pair of earrings.

Ruby.

One to each bastard.

A pair that had belonged to Roose's mother.

Domeric had embraced a sister well, eager as most only children were…

For the full three days she had remained at the Dreadfort.

By the moon turns end, a storm had rolled over their land.

Roose did not know, until this day, what had transpired. He had been engaged in his personal chambers, examining the letter with his Maester he was dispatching to the Crown, requesting dispensation for legitimacy over his newly obtained daughter, when the tousled squire came dashing in, red faced and panting.

"It's your daughter, my Lord. She's… She's gone."

The guards had been knocked unaware. Limp bodies at her door. Her bedchamber, which had been placed so close to his own, was barren. Domeric had been inside, having likely been playing with the babe, he too in an unnatural sleep.

There was only a note left, on torn parchment, perched between the ruffled, empty furs of her cradle.

_I am sorry, but needs must. She will return. A.D_

When Domeric awoken, he had spoken of a tall bearded man with a pointy bonnet and strange robes and a stick that shone like a shooting star. Pink and blue with embroidered moons, and a warm smile.

Nothing but a childish fevered dream.

Roose searched, but it was to no avail.

She was… Gone.

No sign or hair or scrap or scent to track.

Gone.

There was nothing to be done.

Roose, even still, kept to his deal with the Miller's wife. Every year he would send the woman piglets and chickens, and a bag of stars, on the understanding she would never tell Ramsay his roots.

She did not listen.

She soaked the boys head with notions of lordship and wealth and rightful rank. She came back once more, indifferent that her daughter was missing, insisting Roose provide a servant to the boy, who was growing more wild and unruly by the day.

He did.

Only in jest.

Reek, a foul-smelling servant who lurked in the shadows around the Dreadfort, who was as depraved and wrenched as a man could be, was sent post haste.

The jest was on Roose.

Ramsay and Reek became inseparable.

Perhaps the beast of a man filled the hole his twin left, whether the boy knew it or not, whether his mother had thought it important to inform him of his sibling as she clearly found significance in notifying the boy of his Lordly father and brother.

Roose thought he may, perhaps, hate her a little for that.

Worst of all, Domeric, as soon as he came back from being fostered in the Vale of Arryn by House Redfort, a good match for a Firstborn Heir, he began to ponder where the yearly shipments of piglets were going, and from under Roose's clever eye, followed the cart one day.

He unearthed the brother of his missing sister at the trails end.

Along with conceptions of dignity, jousting, and knightly talents Domeric had brought with him back from the Vale, he too brought a notion of family entirely too Southron.

He didn't understand something was… _Wrong _with the boy.

Not the way Roose had when he initially glimpsed him.

And perhaps, perchance, beneath it all, a certain seed rooted Roose's resentment of the child. A seed he could not control.

_The wrong child had lived. _

_My daughter was gone while this one frolicked in the woods. _

_Why?_

Life, as Roose loathed, had cheated him.

Domeric brought the dishevelled, filthy boy back. Told him of the sister he never knew he had. Promised him hearth and home, and food and brotherhood. Perhaps, he too, his heir, was trying to fill the hole.

Roose had ordered he take the boy back to where he belonged.

Domeric, keenly, had countered.

"Wilhelmina would have wanted him here. If not for the boy, if not for me, if only for her memory… Let him stay."

He did.

Begrudgingly.

An heir and a spare was customary, after all.

Or so he said to those who asked for the reasoning of his sudden shift of opinion.

The boy, Ramsay, was reckless and ruthless and cruel. A Bolton of old, where Red Kings reigned and direwolves cowered. Perfect… If born centuries ago. Yet, they lived through more nuanced and unique times than their ancestors. Times that called for subtlety and restraint.

Virtues Ramsay profoundly lacked in all regard.

His…_ Hunts_, Roose would call them politely, were beginning to draw attention from the Smallfolk. Rumours of his hounds and chases simmering in taverns of the Weeping Waters, and when the Smallfolk talked, the Lords would listen… Lord Stark would listen, and that was not a fight Roose wanted to pick.

_Yet. _

A Bolton always knew when, or when not to, strike.

A lesson he was trying to teach his sons as he took them for that morning hunt.

If they were to be a family, they were both to act like true Boltons.

Not a mad-dog and flowery knight of Highgarden.

A morning hunt that was disturbed by a half-carved man wailing in their stables. Bloodied and beaten and broken, like the Miller's wife of old. Who laughed and snickered and hooted and sang and said one name.

Wilhelmina.

Roose saw his hand.

His _flayed_ hand, clutched to his chest, fingers blackened and brutally bent.

Only a Bolton, Roose knew, would have the skill to leave the bottom most layer of skin intact while peeling, where the sense and feeling came from.

The hunt was abandoned.

A new hunt began.

* * *

_Myranda's P.O.V_

The kennel master's daughter despised going into town. It was dank and dark and dirty. Smallfolk pressing together, hocking their wears, haggling over flanks of meat with little coin. She much preferred it in the Dreadfort, in the kennels with her father, tending to the hounds, in the warmth, where she could watch, as had come to be her new favoured leisure, watching the Bolton bastard Ramsay Snow.

She heard what they said of him.

Of course she had.

Everyone _knew, _though no one spoke of it in fear of Lord Bolton's wrath.

Yet, listen she did. Listen and watch, and bit by bit, inch by inch, she was irrevocably _devoured_.

There was something in the bastards gaze, something that reminded Myranda of the hounds in the kennel the day before a hunt, where they had been starved for a few turns to ensure they tracked well.

A ravenous hunger.

A boundless greed.

A bloody thirst.

It called to something deep inside her, a tangled gnarly bind of reckless desire.

And he never, not once, looked her way.

She hated that most.

Myranda had always been a cruel girl. Cruel and mean and callous. When she wanted something, she wanted it with everything she had, every ache and hunger and need. The kitchen maid who had that lovely ribbon in her pretty blonde hair could tell you so.

If you could still find her bloated carcass in the bottom of the well and it had not been fished out.

And she wanted the bastard with his own hungry eyes.

She wanted and wanted and wanted.

Myranda was good at getting what she wanted, because, unlike others, she knew when to act. She hung back and she watched, and she waited, and she wanted. One day, he _would _look at her. One day, he _would_ see.

One day, he would know she was just like him.

Only she could ever really understand him.

_Only she. _

And it came.

Her one chance.

A man came lurching into the Bolton's stable and the Dreadfort was sent into a flurry. She watched as their intended hunt was swiftly abandoned in favour of the broken man, as Domeric, the handsome heir, was instructed by his father to take the man inside, as Lord Bolton took Ramsay's shoulder and urged him too, strangely, inside.

She eavesdropped by the door, hearing Lord Bolton probing the mumbling man about where _Wilhelmina _was? Where had he come from? Where was _she _now?

His questions had fallen on crazed ears.

The man only ever spoke a poem, asking if Mina, whoever this girl was, was happy with him now that he remembered it. It was her favourite, after all, he assured them in a sloppy slur.

"_The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. I remember now, Mina. I remember. Do I get to go home now? Mina promised if I remembered, I could go home."_

_Lord Bolton scoffed. _

"_Not until you tell me where Wilhelmina is."_

"_Wrong! Wrong! Wrong question for a wrong man! It's never where Wilhelmina is, but where isn't she? I told you! Her favourite… I told you… The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. I remember! I remember!" _

"_I will ask graciously one last time. Where is Wilhelmina?" _

Myranda's mother had much been like the mumbling man, from the few memories she had of the older woman before she passed when Miranda was only nine. She saw ghosts, her father said, but could only speak in riddles.

The Smallfolk called her Mad Marleen.

It made her angry.

It made her sad.

It made her violent.

Sometimes, rarely, her father looked at Myranda as if she too, could see ghosts.

Perhaps she could, because she could understand the man.

He _had _told them.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep…

_The woods. _

If she brought Lord Bolton this Wilhelmina, whoever she was, if she brought the girl right to Ramsay's father, dropped her at his feet, Ramsay _must _look to her then.

He simply must, and he would see, and Myranda's want would be filled and-

No one missed the kennel masters daughter as she dipped out the castle through the servants entrance round back.

The Weeping Water Woods was easy to find, and easier to get lost in. Many a traveller's bones strewing the sodden ground, as salt white as the woods, where branch and bone could be mistaken for one and the other.

Myranda was safe.

She had grown up traversing these very looming bare-branched trees and winding, hazy trails that had slain many a braver, but denser, man. The sun, blanketed by the thick northern cloudfall, was high in the sky, near time for midday meal, when the branch behind her snapped underfoot.

She whirled around.

Nobody was there.

She went to carry on-

Another branch snapped behind her.

She swivelled.

Again, nothing-

A snicker, as light and thick as smoke.

Off in the skeletal trees.

"Who is there?"

The wind blew.

She took another step.

Something tugged on a lock of her brown hair harshly, yanking her head back, making her stumble.

Once More, she turned, once more, nothing.

The chuckle was louder now.

"Show yourself!"

Myranda could see no one, nothing, but a voice did come, as misty and murky as the laughter still chiming in the wind.

"You're from that castle on the cliff, aren't you? The big mean looking one?"

They sounded youthful, with the raspy tones of leaves rustling in the breeze, or bones shifting under dirt, all the mischievousness of a forest sprite or a pitiless spirit on the flip of a coin, a chance of mood and time of day.

"The Dreadfort?"

Something darted out the corner of her eye, a wisp of colour blinking, and Myranda spun. Nothing.

A giggle.

"I'll take that as a yes."

Suddenly, she felt someone one behind her, looming. Abruptly, her heart shot into her throat, lodging. Unexpectedly, there was a very keen, cutting knife's edge pressing dangerously into the soft skin of her delicately thin throat.

A hand wrapped into the hair at the nape of her neck, wrapped and twisted and wrenched. Her head shot backwards, baring her throat, gaze trapped to the colourless sky.

Myranda fell still.

She had a dagger in her boot, she was not so naive to come into the lawless woods with no weapon to guard herself with, but she couldn't bend, not with the hand in her hair and-

The voice came, brushing hotly against the shell of her ear.

"A man, Dolohov, came rushing to it a few hours ago, didn't he?"

Myranda swallowed and winced as the ripple of her throat pushed tighter to the blade burrowing into it. Something hot and thick dribbled down to her neck, dipping into her collar bone.

_Blood_.

Her blood.

"The mumbling man?"

She dared not wiggle, in fear the knife would slice. She needed to be smart. Swift and smart and sly. She would keep the woman behind her talking, and when her chance came, for it would, her chances always came, she would strike. Yet, Myranda was not swift. She was not smart. And she was not sly. Not as much as she arrogantly believed she was.

Myranda was a cruel, and mean, and callous girl.

And such girls never really knew when to stop talking.

The chuckle was as cold as the voice, as raspy as it too, and yes, it did hum more like the clatter of bones.

"The mumbling man… I like that. I like that a lot."

"Who are you? Are you… Are you Wilhelmina?"

The tutting came slow. Taunting. The knife pressed in deeper.

"I see the mumbling man has been talking. Shame, really. I _was _going to let you go."

There was no mistaking that dry and wry tone.

Myranda knew what was coming.

She began to bargain. If the person behind her was a man, it would have been easy. Simple. Men like supple, young flesh, and Myranda was used to doing what she must to survive. They would have never finished, anyhow. She would have had the knife off them, embedded in their own throat, their coins in her own pouch, long before then.

Some women too.

However, there was no wily grope to her breast, no pelvis pushing into her hip, not even a skim of knuckles against her waist. Whatever this woman wanted; it was not her body. Her coin pouch was still tied to the belt around her waist, not so much thumbed. She did not want her money.

_You're from that castle on the cliff, aren't you?_

"I can take you to the castle. I can bring you inside. The guards won't let a stranger in-"

"Oh, I know. I spied them earlier. Whoever owns that castle runs a tight ship. But I won't be a stranger. Not really."

"I can help-"

"I don't need your help. Only your face."

"I don't understand. I will not tell Lord Bolton you are here if-"

"Of course you won't. You won't have the chance. Now, undress."

"Please, I can-"

The knife carved, cutting, raking, _warning._

"Now."

Myranda's tongue fell lifeless, as her hands came up to the laces at her back, unravelling and tugging. She pulled the sleeves off her slim shoulders, the inexpensive material pooling at her feet. She kicked herself out her leather shoes.

She wore no small clothes.

Bare as the day she was born.

Bare and cold and crying.

Perhaps the woman behind her did like her body. Perhaps there was a chance to-

The dress was tugged from out under her feat, a ruffling behind her, cloth thrown, strange cloth, light blue and thick, like a hide of some kind, a jerkin of white, slim, and shoes with strange soles and patches and laces up the front.

The knife moved, slipped to a lock of her hair and lopped.

The hair was snatched away before it could flutter to the ground.

The knife was gone, so was the presence at her back, and Myranda took her chance.

She span, wide-eyed, and saw the girl not a few strides away, already in her dress and shoes and-

Dark coiled hair the colour of night, skin the shade of fresh milk and eyes, large, the shade of moonlight.

Myranda faltered.

She knew those eyes. Knew that infinite hunger and voracious greed, that keen smile and keener gaze. She knew that ruby earring, hanging from lobe, shiny like a drop of blood. She knew and she wanted and she-

The girl dipped a hand into her own pouch hanging at her hip, pulled free a flask, and tossed a lock of hair into it, before shoving the rest not used back into the pouch. She shook the bottle once, twice, three times and-

She drank it.

Tipped her head right back and gulped it down in one swallow.

"You… You… You look just like-"

Myranda would never get to finish that thought as she watched, impossibly, as the woman rippled like a reflection, like a reflection disturbed in a pond, flowing and swelling, Bolton eyes spinning smaller, tight, amber. Dark hair lifting to muddy brown. Hips narrowing, thinning, breasts growing, size inching smaller and-

Myranda was abruptly gaping back at herself, right down to the tiny scar on her cheekbone from a childhood mishap.

Myranda grinned back at Myranda.

Myranda had never been a girl of much faith, never once taking comfort in the Godswood, but she, then, faced with such impossibility, found herself speaking without ever really meaning to.

"Are you an old God?"

The woman with her face winked at her.

"Not quite, but close."

Then, there was a stick in her hand, knobbed and long, and aimed right at her and-

She was trussed and bound, resolutely, rope around her wrists and ankles, snaking around her legs and chest, and she was falling to the floor, unbalanced, pebbles and twigs digging into her naked flesh unforgivingly, cutting and scraping.

"Please, do not kill me. I can-"

"I'm not going to kill you. We're going to have a little wager. I'm going to leave you right here, and if you manage to get out of your binds, outrun that pack of wolves I saw earlier, and make it back to the castle before you freeze to death, you're free to go. If not… Well, I win the bet then, don't I?"

Myranda could not see the woman from her cowered form on the floor. Yet, she heard the steps residing.

"Hold! Please! I can…Please!"

Her pleas, just as with the mumbling man, as her mother with her father, fell on crazed ears.

A wolf howled in the distance.

* * *

_Thoughts?_

**_A.N:_ **So what did you think? I hope you liked it! I would just like to say a quick **Thank you **to all the follows and favourites, and of course, reviews. All the kindness this crazy fic has brought is actually quite mind blowing, so, really, **thank you **all.

Who's P.O.V do you wish to see next? Let me know!

As always, if you have a prompt, do not hesitate for one moment to send it in! And, if you have a spare moment or two, please review, I love hearing all your thoughts and feelings, and they do honestly keep me focused on the fic at hand. Once again, thank you, and I will hopefully see you all very soon!


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